


Ballad of Orion

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, M/M, Stargazing, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 01:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3509969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vampire and a hunter spend the evening of February 14th eating (or not) dinner, learning that vamps can get drunk, oversharing about serious things, and stargazing.</p>
<p>A Valentine's Day fic that was originally intended to walk the thin line between bromance and romance, and but halfway through tripped and fell completely over it. As usual, Dean has a hard time with feelings, but at least he's trying. Benny is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ballad of Orion

**Author's Note:**

> Something I banged out in early February, and have finally got green-lighted to post now that voting's over. Didn't win any sort of honorable mentions, but hey I'm proud of it. It's a damn fine piece, and I hope you enjoy it.

Benny Lafitte couldn’t remember his last Valentine’s Day. To be sure, it was a bit of a rough job keeping track of living time in Purgatory, given there weren’t even any sunsets there. Lord even knew where the hazy gray light in Purgatory’s sky came from, anyway. Not that _that_ was a big topic for contemplation with a herd of monsters on your tail.

Truth was, he’d been shocked he was only down below for half a century or so. It was longer than he’d been topside, sure, but fifty years wasn’t much in the lifespan of a vampire.

Lot could change in fifty years, though. Choices, as he’d said to Dean. So many choices.

The vampire scrubbed his hand across his face, trying to exit his spiraling line of logic.

Right. Valentine’s Day.

The red everywhere was garish, but Benny was the kinda guy who could appreciate that. And even if it’d been commercially co-opted from the get-go, there was something kinda sweet about a holiday for love. It lit a little spark in him, that tinder about ‘seeing something in humanity’ set alight with evidence. All human. Nah, Valentine’s Day wasn’t a holiday for vamps.

Truth told, wasn’t much of a holiday for hunters either, from what he’d been told. But if there was one thing Benny knew, it was Dean Winchester was a stubborn man, and he didn’t much care for protocol.

So, one way or another, Benny Lafitte, vampire extraordinaire, found himself looking up at a tumbledown two-story in Sioux Falls, SD with his thumbs hooked in his suspenders and wondering what in the holy hell he thought he was doing.

But before he could waltz his way off into the sunset like a sane man, Dean was hanging out the doorway and waving him in. And so Benny sauntered on in, tucking his hands into his pockets. He could hear Dean’s heart pounding like a drum and wanted to laugh a little, but didn’t. It was true this was the first time they’d seen each other in a long while, and to be honest, Benny was a little nervous too. Fighting off a pack of Leviathan? No problem. But emotions were a little trickier than all that, even though Benny knew for a fact that he at least was a little more well-adjusted than Dean. Came with having thirty or forty odd years outside the scope of the supernatural world, he supposed.

Point was, Benny found himself baffled but not overly shocked at the way the old place had been set up. The table was cleared off, draped in some dollar-store red-checked tablecloth, with a brass candelabra sitting right smack-dab in the middle. The vampire pressed the pad of his thumb and the knuckle of his index finger to his lips to hide the little smile growing there. Dean’s heart was still pattering in the background, white noise.

“Look,” the hunter said at last, fidgeting just slightly though his green eyes were stubborn and strong. “I know you don’t… Really… Eat. Food, I mean. But, uh… Just bear with me, alright?”

His expression was defiant, daring Benny to make a comment, to walk out. The vampire rolled his eyes.

“Brother,” Benny said with a sigh, crossing his arms over his chest and smiling wryly, “if you think for a moment I wouldn’t go through the mouth of hell for your dumb ass, you are dead wrong. I’m sure as hell gonna put up with a little dinner.”

Much to Benny’s undisguised pleasure, that prompted Dean to bring out two plates of what looked like spaghetti with homemade sauce and meatballs. And while his tastes ran a little more to the raw side – and had since Dean had known him – Dean also knew Benny was a cook. The blend of spices, the acidic tang of tomato, and the savory, not-quite-right smell of cooked meat; even if taste was something soured by vampirism, smell was all the better.

After Dean had finished eating and Benny had nibbled enough to be polite, the hunter stood and snagged a foil-topped bottle of champagne and two wine glasses. The thought of Dean owning champagne flutes was enough to get Benny to crack a smile, and Dean just shot him a Look.

“What, Benny?” the green-eyed man demanded as he poured them each a glass.

“Pegged you as more of a whiskey man,” the vampire commented.

Dean shoved him.

“Shut up. I’m playing to tradition. You’re old, you like that kinda crap, right?” he muttered, taking a long drink of the cheap champagne with the strangest pinched grimace Benny had ever seen.

“I may be old-fashioned, Dean Winchester, but I’m quick to adapt,” retorted Benny.

He took a sip of the drink, which tasted odd and dead on his tongue, but made no comment. While Dean put up with his diet, it was in decidedly poor taste to mention blood in a candlelight setting. Even he knew that.

“Yeah, how amazed were you about cell phones?” asked Dean. “I’m almost sorry I didn’t get to see that. I mean, last time you were topside, weren’t they still using rotary phones?”

Benny scoffed, taking a longer, definitely more uncouth swig of the champagne.

“Surprised you even know what they’re called,” he mocked. “You’re barely outta your cradle, chief. And I never took you for a big lover of history.”

There was a long silence between them, and if Benny were to categorize Dean’s expression as anything, it would have been ‘pouting’. Dean, of course, would likely not see eye to eye with him on that, and there was a spark of something serious and bitter in the hunter’s green eyes that was probably best left alone. But Benny was fine with the silence, and the brooding, because it gave him time to study the set lines of Dean’s jaw. Living something over a century – and didn’t he feel like some sorta cradle robber (that is, even more than with Andrea) thinking that – had molded Benny Lafitte into a very patient man. And so, it was Dean who broke the silence, slapping the unfortunate wine glass in his hand down onto the table so hard Benny was surprised it didn’t shatter.

“This is not turning out like I planned,” the hunter admitted, tone mixed between annoyance and embarrassment, which was all the more endearing.

“Brother, you gotta learn to go with the flow sometimes,” suggested Benny, who found his smile easy and low.

“What flow is that?” Dean demanded.

“Well, Dean, you got an open bottle’a champagne and a ‘body to share it with. We all know you’re no smooth customer, so just relax, brother.”

And, for once, Dean didn’t seem to have a smart remark or a counter argument. Benny made a mental tick on his scoreboard for that, and let loose a grin. Five minutes later, Dean scrambled up again, and returned to the table with a bundle of blood red roses, shoving them into Benny’s arms. The smile Benny offered in return showed teeth, though not fangs.

“Why Dean Winchester, did you buy me a bouquet?”

“Yeah, so?” asked Dean, downing what was left of his glass and fidgeting like a teenager. “Told you I was doing this by the book.”

Benny’s lips pressed hard together to suppress a fond smile.

“So you did,” he agreed, setting aside the roses. “So you did indeed.”

Neither one of them were sure when or why the whiskey was brought out. Dean, for his part, insisted they pour a little on the parched ground outside in some sort of tribute to Bobby. Benny, who kept drinking despite the unappealing taste on his more iron-inclined palate, had no problem with that.

After another half an hour of slow drinking, peppered with the same stupid sorta bland inquiries and tit-for-tat banter Benny had come to be used to, Dean insisted it was too hot inside. Benny stuffed his hands in his pockets and didn’t bother to point out that the heat was more from the alcohol than any sort of deficiency in the house itself.

Being a stubborn mule, as he was wont to be, Dean led Benny up to the roof of what he was slowly coming to realize must have been Bobby Singer’s house. The idea of the old man glowering at him for going on what was ostensibly a date with Dean in _his_ house of all places made Benny grin a little wildly. He was used to getting attitude about his condition, but he wasn’t so mature as to mind throwing this sorta thing in someone’s face. Even a dead guy’s.

“I s’pose this is how all ‘a your dates end, is it?” Benny asked, hauling his arm over the edge of the roof and only then realizing he was still carrying an open bottle of whiskey.

Dean laughed, and the sound hit the starry air with a burst of what Benny could only describe as audible light.

“You’d be surprised,” the green-eyed man insisted, wrapping his hands around Benny’s bicep to haul him bodily onto the shingles.

An hour later, their idle chat had fallen into silence, and the bottle of alcohol was empty.

“I didn’t even know vamps could get drunk,” Benny murmured, a little too dizzy and warm to really take in that his head was pillowed on Dean’s belly.

“Yeah, me neither.”

The vampire let out a low chuckle, pressing his eyelids together sharply to try and alleviate some of the fuzziness around his vision. Stars were what he’d missed most in Purgatory, aside from Andrea and the sea. It was making him nostalgic, and foolish.

“You know your constellations?” he asked Dean suddenly.

For a reason Benny couldn’t quite fathom, Dean’s voice went gruff.

“A few.”

A long silence spilled between them. The vampire didn’t like it, so he reached out a verbal peace branch, pointing to the stars spanning the sky directly in front of them.

“That’s Orion, you know,” he mused.

“He’s Greek, right?” Dean asked.

Benny nodded and traced the pattern of stars with one large finger.

“Yeah, he was a hunter,” the vampire explained, smirking. “Worked together with Artemis for a long while.”

Dean snorted suddenly. Benny turned his head, just the slightest, to try and get a clue from Dean’s face, but the hunter was still staring up at the stars.

“Dude. I met her once,” the hunter explained, shaking his head a little.

Benny shrugged and returned his gaze to the sky as well.

“Small world, I guess. Anyway, her twin brother Apollo was worried about Orion makin’ a move on her, since she’d declared she was gonna be a virgin forever. So he tricked Artemis into shooting him, but she found out and made Zeus turn him into a constellation.”

Dean hummed in understanding.

“Think there’s any truth to that?” he wondered.

“Don’t see why not,” answered Benny. “Too bad though, if it is. ‘s what happens with family involved, I guess. People get dumb. Even gods.”

Dean shifted a little, uncomfortably, Benny thought. But with the way the man talked about his brother, that was to be expected. He’d made his fair share of blunders trying to keep Sam safe, and maybe the story hit a little too close to home. Stories were like that sometimes.

A sudden rhythmic buzzing stirred the both of them, and Dean fumbled blearily for his cell, tucked in his right front pocket.

“Hold on,” he grumbled, though whether it was to Benny or the phone itself the vampire couldn’t tell.

There was a low green light from the device’s screen, a few beeps and clicks as Dean pressed buttons, and then the hunter groaned and slapped the glowing piece of plastic down on the shingles next to his hip.

“What was that all about?” Benny rumbled, and couldn’t hide his amusement.

Dean waved a hand back and forth in the air like he was dispelling a cloud of smoke.

“Just Sammy,” he huffed out. “Told me not to drive drunk. He thinks I’m up at a club in Minneapolis.”

Benny clicked his tongue.

“Why’d you lie to your brother, Dean?”

In response, Dean just let out an inelegant snort.

“You wanna be the one to tell him I’m on a dinner date with a vampire?” the hunter asked, brandishing his phone.

The vampire laughed, loud in the quiet night air.

“Nah. I’m gonna need to be sober ‘fore I put that kinda decision in my hands,” he insisted teasingly.

They continued that vein of banter for a while, even after it went stale and repetitive. But then Dean pulled in a sharp breath and the entire atmosphere shifted. Something in the quality of the air around them changed, like even the unseen dust motes and windblown particles of the world were waiting for what the hunter had to say.

“You know I was a vampire once?” Dean mumbled.

Benny sat all the way up just to stare him down at that.

“You were _what_ now?”

Dean’s lips curled up in a guilty smile.

“I,” he said, pointing at himself, “was like you.”

And then he leaned up a bit and pressed a palm – with too much force, but Benny didn’t move an inch – into the vampire’s chest. Benny’s mouth, and by extension his beard, twitched slightly.

“I would _love_ to hear how you got outta that one, brother.”

Dean, nodding, folded his hands behind his head.

“My mom’s side of the family had this recipe, like, Campbell’s soup for the fanged and weary?” he slurred out, grinning a bit distantly. “The blood of the vamp who turned you, and… I ‘unno, some other stuff. Goes down like a bad trip though. Think I puked up my vampire-ness.”

Benny’s hand twitched into a loose fist, and even though he was halfway to dead drunk, Dean caught that movement. Then he pointedly looked away.

“Only works if you haven’t fed though.”

The warm coil of hope beginning to twist in Benny’s gut snapped and fizzled out.

“I see.”

“Sorry, man.”

“’s no problem, Dean,” Benny eased, voice lilting as he attempted to keep the twang of disappointment from souring his tone.

But maybe a little bit did, because Dean sat up slowly and his eyes lowered to his lap, scratching the flat of his nails against the palm of his opposite hand. And Benny couldn’t stand that. Maybe it was the alcohol making him loose-lipped and stupid, maybe it was sentimentality – that came on in one’s old age, right? – but he decided to make a confession of his own.

“I told you about Andrea,” Benny said slowly. “But I never told you about my wife. From when I was human.”

Dean seemed puzzled at that, though after a few seconds a look of realization crossed his face.

“Elizabeth’s great-grandma?”

“The very one,” Benny confirmed. “Her name was Charlotte Benoit. Met her in New Orleans, we were both workin’ in a diner, me as a cook and her as a waitress.”

Dean scoffed, but not in a way that could be considered offensive. Just a little surprised.

“Far cry from a Greek heiress,” he prodded.

“Yeah, s’pose that’s true enough,” chuckled Benny, shaking his head. “She wasn’t like Andrea, that’s a sure thing. Well, it was early in the 1900s. No, had to be ’18 at least, as I recall the Great War bein’ over. I wasn’t quite so much fun then, bein’ human and all, but I was still just as charming.”

“Modest too,” Dean retorted, and Benny ignored him but for a smile.

“So, it wasn’t long ‘fore I was courting the lovely Charlotte Benoit.”

“Oh?” Dean asked, in the way that demanded details.

Benny raised his hands in surrender. Though he hadn’t spoken about Charlotte in an age, too long, hadn’t even brought her up to Andrea… It felt almost right to indulge in that human past, on Valentine’s Day, with Dean Winchester.

“Alright, alright,” he agreed. “Well, there I was, just after the noontime rush, all ready to ask Miss Charlotte to come to dinner with me. And what does she do but pop in with a smile on her face askin’ “Benny, would you mind terribly whippin’ up a pecan pie? My sister Marie is gettin’ married come Sunday.” So of course I agreed, but on one condition: that I accompany her to the wedding.”

Dean cracked a grin, more like a smirk than anything, and leaned back on his hands, tipping his chin up. The maneuver exposed the hunter’s chest and neck more readily, and a surge of hunger dashed up Benny’s veins, itching in his gums. He swallowed it down with the bittersweet memory of Charlotte.

“Smart,” Dean pronounced of the plan at last.

“I thought I was mighty clever at the time, myself,” the vampire continued with a nod. “But then when the wedding was over and I asked her to get dinner with me the next week, she confessed she only asked for the pie as an excuse so she’d be able to invite me to come to the wedding with her. Well, I found myself a little flustered at that, but everything worked out alright. After all, we were goin’ to dinner the next week, simple as that.”

When Dean snickered and a shook his head, his eyes sparkled in the low light. He let out an impressed whistle.

“Got you good, huh?”

“That she did. From there on, nothing much exciting happened. We courted a long time, and then I proposed, right in the middle of the Mardi Gras preparations, 1922. We got married that year, and moved to my hometown: Carencro. Settled down, had a son… I thought I was livin’ the dream.”

Benny exhaled bitterly through his nose in a sort of silent scoff. Everything fell so silent he could almost hear the gears clicking into place in Dean’s brain.

“You got turned,” the hunter rasped, expression open and broken and purely empathetic in a way that filled Benny’s heart to overflowing. “You got turned and couldn’t go back…”

“To be honest,” Benny admitted, “I didn’t even think to. Not until it was too late. I mean, when you get turned, your maker is God to you, Dean. You need blood, and he’s the one that gives it to you. Charlotte and my boy Roy, they… They were gone outta my mind.”

And then suddenly Dean was scrubbing his face with the back of his hand, and it didn’t take supernatural hearing to catch the hitch in his breath.

“Dammit. Dammit. Son of a bitch,” he managed, voice trembling just slightly.

“Nothin’ nobody can do about it now, Dean. I’m just fine,” Benny insisted.

The hunter shook his head, hard, and gulped down several breaths of cool February air before speaking again. When he did, however, he sat hunched forward, head ducked down.

“That’s not… I… I didn’t know about the cure when I got turned,” Dean admitted, flexing his hands slightly. “I thought…”

His voice cracked a little, and Benny squeezed his shoulder with one large hand. That, it seemed, was enough.

“I thought I was gonna die. So I went to Lisa and Ben’s house. I did that, I… I put them in danger.”

“Least you still remembered them,” Benny offered, leaning back on his hands and letting a puff of air part his lips into a sigh.

“I dragged her into my crazy, screwed-up life, Benny!”

“Well, yeah. But that’s all anybody does. You gotta look at it this way, Dean, if it wasn’t monsters it woulda been something else,” the vampire explained sagely.

“Something less dangerous, at least!”

And Benny was reminded that Dean was stubborn and stupid as all get out and reasoning with him was never gonna work. Like it hadn’t to convince him to leave that angel behind in Purgatory. So, with a fond sigh, Benny clapped Dean into a hug and just held him for a long, long while.

“Maybe we’re both just dumb jackasses,” he said with a tone of soft amusement.

“Maybe,” answered Dean, and Benny took it as agreement.

“Now come on, chief. Wasn’t this supposed to be some sorta date? We let the mood get all heavy on us.”

There was a slight nod into the meat of Benny’s shoulder, and then Dean pulled away. The look he offered was almost as starry-eyed as the one he’d given the angel in Purgatory, and Benny didn’t take a single nuance of the expression for granted. Instead, he let his lips fall into a stupid, dozy smile, and easily hauled the hunter to his feet.

“Normally these kinds of things end with less clothes, for me,” Dean admitted, blinking hard as he attempted to keep his balance.

Benny laughed then, the mirth sharp and sudden like cannon fire.

“I’ll hold you to that someday, Dean. But for now I better make sure you don’t break your neck gettin’ down from this roof.”

They stumbled a bit, climbing down, though Benny could already feel the alcohol leeching out of his system. He had enough of a stupid, teenage rush zipping through his veins to counteract the sobriety, however.

“Come on, brother, into bed,” the vampire grunted, all but hauling Dean onto one of Bobby’s rumpled-looking guest beds.

Dean just answered with a content noise and a stupid grin as Benny tucked him in.

* * *

 

“Dean. Get up.”

 “Sammy?” Dean groaned, blocking the light with his forearm. “What’re you doing here…?”

Sam, hands on his hips, just shot Dean a Look.

“It’s almost noon, Dean,” the brunette snapped. “You never texted back last night, and I called you ten times this morning; God only knows the kind of trouble you could have been in, so I tracked your cell to Bobby’s.”

“Psssh… I’m fine,” Dean slurred, scrunching his face into what he hoped was a skeptical look. “Bitch.”

“Jerk,” Sam muttered.

He looked like he was about to say more, but suddenly cheerful whistling echoed up the stairs from the kitchen. Sam whirled around, shoulders tense and on edge. Dean just hauled himself into a sitting position, unconcerned.

“’s just Benny,” he yawned.

“Benny?” Sam demanded. “The vampire? That Benny?”

Dean shot his brother a shit-eating grin and sauntered as best he could down the stairs because hot damn that smelled like pancakes and sausage and not even Sam’s pissy mood could keep Dean from a wholesome, greasy American breakfast.

Benny’s light blue eyes immediately locked on him when he stepped into the kitchen.

“Mornin’, cher,” greeted the vampire, offering out a plate of food and the kind of fond smile that Dean realized with a lurch he had begun associating with home.

“God, Benny, you are the best,” the hunter insisted, trying to cover up the warm hollow in his chest by stuffing his face full of pancake.

Benny’s quirked eyebrow had Dean shuffling, shamefaced, to take a seat at the table. He noticed, with a slight pang of regret, that the bouquet of roses had withered some, well on their way to dying. They’d forgotten to place them in a vase of water.

Still, Dean felt comfortable and full and _safe_ , even though it was difficult to process that. In the end, there was a part of him that would still struggle with what he’d done to deserve this kind of happiness, and whether or not it’d be ripped away from him the way it always was. But, for once, he didn’t feel the need to let those worries overtake him immediately.

Sam, grudgingly, joined them ten minutes later.

As he did, he slapped Dean’s phone onto the table, and asked, “Do I even _want_ to know why your cell phone was on the roof?”

Benny grinned like the goddamn Cheshire cat, and Dean couldn’t help the quirk of his own lips as he shrugged, resembling some errant preteen who’d skipped curfew.


End file.
